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Unforgiven (A Short Story)
Location: Ivanoff research station Undisclosed date after Onyx incident Dr. Halsey scanned the room, just minutes passed since she had been cuffed and dragged from her lab to what seemed a well lit generic interrogation room. Her cold protests and abuse hurled at her captors gained her nothing, as the marines unceremoniously plonked her down into a hard metal chair, locking her foot restraints into the floor. Closing her in by herself. "..the admiral is rather enjoying her victory over me...what a pointless exercise of who is in charge..." she thought, absentmindedly trying to adjust her glasses, but finding the task annoyingly complex due to the restraints and the loss of her arm. Finding herself looking at the various cameras in the corners of the room, with their green lights indicating she was being watched, she mapped every detail of the simple white metal room in an instant. Suddenly the smooth seamless metallic interior of the room was broken, as the door opened. "..increase illumination..4 levels.." the entering man said in an even, perhaps even friendly tone. Dressed in a standard naval uniform, his rank insignia indicated he was a fleet Captain. Everything about him was strange, from the sunglasses he wore indoors to the oddly efficient military way of walking. He turned to the armed guards about to follow him in. "Outside gentlemen!..and 2 cups of coffee please.." he said in a stern, but still amicable tone "..Milk, no sugar for me and black, two sugars for my guest.." The guards left, closing the door behind them and Dr. Halsey found herself amused by the fact that he knew how she drank her coffee. "..typical ONI excess.." she thought. But what was more disturbing to her, even as he had not yet taken off his glasses. There was something vaguely familiar to this man. He started walking around the room, circling the desk in the centre, walking as he started reading a dossier. He was moving silently and he walked without looking up from his reading, seemingly knowing exactly where everything was. She was getting annoyed with the fact that he had not yet directly adressed her. "..Listen!!..I have important work to do...You bloody ONI puppet..." Halsey said coldly, finding herself annoyed with the officer's display of idiosyncratic behaviour. Her sentence was cut short by him holding up a finger and pulling out the chair across from her. Suddenly all cameras in the room went dead and the lights flickered slightly, as her electronic restraints unlocked and fell to the floor. Something darkly intimidating about him compelled her to remain quiet, as a chill of fear gripped her normally stoic mind. Placing his file on the table and sitting down, he smiled and gently replied "I know..and we'll get to that..but I'm not ONI" looking directly at her. He took a photo from his breast pocket, sliding it gently towards her with great care, as though it carried tremendous value to him. She always prided herself on being able to recognize such emotional markers. Looking down at the picture, she saw that it was of an attractive, smiling young woman in uniform, the picture was dated 2555. "...Dear..God!!...Miranda!!.." Halsey thought, her mind racing as she saw the picture "..It's fake..it has to be a fake!" she kept repeating to herself. She found herself in shock yet again as he removed his glasses, staring at her with glowing blue, clearly cybernetic eyes. Her mind was running through countless permutations of what this "man" before her was, no technology or cybernetic replacement she knew of looked like this. She studied him in detail as he seemingly relaxed, took back his prized photo and sat back in his chair. "...Who..the hell are you.." she hissed through her teeth, feeling betrayed, that somehow the memory of her daughter had been tarnished. "...I am the man..." his smile carried pride "Who became the dark, so we no longer have to fear it...who cloned your daughter, Catherine..returned her to the land of the living and made more of her to make us great again..perfect clones with no imperfections, UNIT 014 - the unit in the photo, is biologically 17..." smiling with a hint of near paternal pride "and Attending Luna, I am so very proud" Her mind raced with the realisation that her daughter was "alive". She remembered whispered conversations of an unsanctioned unit operating outside UNSC control, experimenting, using sciences and technologies both immoral and illegal. She was pulled back to reality by his voice "I assume you know who I am..." Halsey measured her response "Yes..and you are a liar!...It is impossible to clone perfectly and highly.." He stopped her mid-sentence, his tone could have frozen hell "Illegal?..I never lie about my job...I have done it because it needed to be done..she was the near perfect candidate..the loss of her genetic material would have been a tragedy...not for the UNSC..but for humanity..." his mechanical gaze unnerving even her. "Pop Quiz: As one the foremost researchers in the field of artificial intelligence" he smiled bitterly "what is the result of injection of a large volume raw Nanocore assemblage directly in living subject?" Halsey felt an unfamiliar chill, recalling an accidental exposure in the lab on Reach. Her viewing the nanites eating a fellow researcher alive, from the the inside as they tried to 'map' him. She spoke softly "Death of the subject in all cases...in complete agony. Testing is banned in this field and rightly so, it is unethical." Feeling her shock subside, she was using her intellect to take control, "Are you the result of such a test?" "Top marks, Doctor. But No, it wasn't because of any test..mine was a twist of fate..getting impaled through the chest by a working nanocore injector during an orbital drop.." He smiled bitterly. "..How unfortunate.." Catherine mulled over what an agony such a transformation could have been, her mind remembering the tortures done to her SPARTANS "..You said you aren't ONI..how did you get in here?" There was a knock on the door and the officer's eyes glowed as the door slid open. "Enter Specialist" he spoke evenly as the young soldier carried in the promised cups of coffee putting them on the table before leaving and closing the door. Picking up his coffee and taking a sip, he smiled at Catherine and spoke seemingly choosing his words with care "..Where were we?...ah yes..me not being ONI..or me being ONI...I am...and I am not, but not in the way you would think.." Catherine silently drank her coffee, quickly becoming annoyed with being toyed with intellectually, a feeling she was most unaccoustomed to. "while I was dead and in hell, the devil came for me..." He said before being interupted by Catherine. "..I am in no mood for games and metaphysical allegories..who are you and who exactly do you work for..and stop lying to me.." Catherine hissed, her hands warm on the the cup. "Oddly enough..I very seldom lie.." Smiling wide "Alright I'll humour you...my unit...while I call them the devil, demons and hell, you can just call them A135 and their Black Captain...." he stared at his coffee "..and as I am their Black Captain currently..I guess it would make me the devil...I suppose.." sighing as he took another sip "..meaning we can talk about just about anything, like the highly classified or even the completely non-existent" Halsey found that unfamiliar chill return, she had heard tales of this unit, each too evil to possibly be true. The shock of actually meeting not only an agent of this mythical unit, but it's commanding officer was beyond belief. Further, she felt disgust at how her daughter could have been cloned such a...creature. "Is the Devil here to offer me a deal?" She lent over the desk, her tone calm, in contrast to her inner turmoil "because if he is...the answer is No...better yet..He can go back to hell!" "Hardly a deal, Cathy" he smiled, seemingly enjoying her use of the allegory as he slid the dossier to her "My..accident gifted me with an AI level intellect, the power to coordinate countless black ops simultaneously and the agonizing torture of being able to remember every detail of what I have done, in crystal clear, high definition...." "My heart bleeds for you" Halsey spat the word, even while finding herself relating to this tortured man "then what does the devil want?" "What this devil needs is more than 7 years, to keep humanity safe in the coming storm..." he said shifting in his seat "...I am starting to go a little rampant and dangerous.." he chuckled "...well more dangerous than usual.." "I can't help you...no one can" Halsey spoke the words, bitterly regretting the truth in them "..not even with forerunner tech could I help you..they had the same rampancy issues....and What bloody storm?!" "In the black of space...there are things far worse than the covenant...worse than the flood..." He frowned opening the dossier showing that it contained detailed schematics of forerunner technologies even she had never seen before. "we have to start preparing for the next war...I just fear it might already be too late..." Catherine looked in fascination at the treasure trove of Forerunner data before her. Moving her glasses up he was in possession of more raw data on them than any she had seen before. "You don't have to say yes...but I know you are interested..." He smiled "which is why I took the liberty of recruiting you...I'm truly sorry, normally I would ask nicely..but this way I piss off Osman...personal bonus, I suppose" Catherine tried to reply as her speech slurred and her vision blurred, looking at the coffee in shock. Sipping his coffee and he smiled at her "No..it was the picture.." Falling forward onto the desk as her thoughts turned black. The man finished his coffee, taking it on the edge not covered in the compound, proudly looking the picture as he put it into a plastic holder. "..Welcome to A135.." The door opened as black clad troopers stepped over the unconscious guards. "Load her up.."